Common Struggle of Increasing Mobile Conversions

Among all ecommerce players, increasing conversion rates is a common struggle. With the sheer number of brands competing in the same industry, this challenge becomes much more troublesome. The fact that the time spent on mobiles is much higher than that on desktops has made ecommerce players recently shift their focus from desktop to mobile. Well, they have to be where their audience is.

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This is what mobile conversion stats across industries look like:

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You can use this stat as a benchmark for your industry and work toward increasing your mobile conversion rate. If you are way behind these numbers, don’t be disheartened. According to a forecast by BI Intelligence, there’s a great opportunity to convert your mobile visitors and increase your mobile conversion rate.

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The above revenue projection points to an opportunity for all ecommerce players. This projection gives information on worldwide retail ecommerce sales from 2014 to 2021. Now you must be wondering how can you leverage this opportunity to boost your mobile conversion rates in your highly competitive industry. Well, there are few elements and steps that you can include to boost conversion by encouraging your mobile visitors to buy more.

The First Step: Moving Beyond the App and Web War

There are some smart quick fixes that can help you convert your mobile visitors and increase the mobile conversion rate. But before that, I’d suggest that you start from the basics, and that would be moving beyond the app vs web war. There is multiple research pointing in many directions, but you can experiment what is working for you and make a wise choice. Research conducted by Criteo shows that mobile apps close deals faster with consumers compared to mobile sites. People also view 4.2x more products per session by using apps compared to mobile sites. Apps also push more people down the sales funnel, with 3x higher conversion rates compared to mobile sites and 1.5x more conversions per session than through desktops.

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If you are catering to your mobile audience only through mobile web, that’s good too. Just refrain from making your mobile website look like these. Now, let’s have a look at few elements that can change the conversion picture for you.

# Elements to Increase Your Mobile Conversion Rate

1. Easy Navigation

Providing your visitors with simple navigation options is non-negotiable. When building the structure of your navigation bar, remember that you not only have to help the mobile visitors find what they’re looking for, but also provide space to explore other options. Here a few ways you can make your navigation simple:

• Create a menu that is distinctive and contains easy-to-understand navigation terms—nothing distracting!!
• Add popular links to your sidebar or use in-line anchor CTAs that direct traffic to your important pages—craft a journey for your user.
• Direct your leads to CTAs through directional arrows and text—help them move down the conversion funnel.
• Having a search section on the top of your web pages is always recommended—let visitors explore!

There are many different ways to lay out your navigation

• Hamburger
• Tab
• Gesture
• Ect

Each one has their pros and cons. Read about them here:Often, making few changes to your website navigation can bring in astonishing conversion results for you. Harvard Business Services had a similar experience. Get some quick learning points from this case study. Focus on making small, incremental changes over time, not lots of huge ones.

2. Detailed Product Descriptions

Writing a product description is not just stringing together groups of words to describe your product or service, but also encourage your visitors to make a purchase. Remember that you are trying to sell to a potential client who is reading it, so you can’t go wrong with it. Keep in mind that not all your prospective and current customers may be experts in your industry.

By cutting the length of the text by 54%, researchers found that not only were readers able to find and remember information more easily, they also scored it as more complete than the longer version!

It’s more or less similar to long-form and short-form content. The bottom line is that a well-written product or service description relates to the visitors, explains how it can resolve their problem, and ultimately makes them want to purchase the product. Here’s what you can try:

• Choose wisely on which features and benefits to include. Try not to overdo on either side and have a perfect combination of both.
• For different platforms, you need to write different product description to avoid being flagged. While doing this, you must try a different tone of voice for different platforms. Look at the example below:.
• Fuzzy Fleece Slippers on Zappos:

• Furry Adventure Slippers on ThinkGeek:

If you think you’d need some help in writing your product description, this post by Kissmetrics is a must read.

3. Clear CTAs

Having clear CTAs is vital for any website. It’s especially true for ecommerce where you are trying to move your visitors down the conversion funnel as soon as possible. CTAs help you create a seamless user flow and guide your users toward the purchase.Here are some quick tips that can help you get started:

• Add popular links to your sidebar or in-line anchor CTAs that directs traffic to your important pages.
• Direct your leads to CTAs through directional arrows (similar to the pink ones shown in the image below) and text. Having search at the top of your webpage is always recommended.

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• Try different colors and copies for your CTAs, depending on the emotion you want to trigger, and the conversion goal.
• You can experiment with the copy of your CTAs to see what works best for your conversions.

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• Use the red color for your calls to action, to establish a sense of urgency. BMI, a leading UK airline, increased its conversion rate by 2.5 percent by adding a red background behind the message “Hurry! Only XX seats left.”

4. Quick Contact Options/Chat

Imagine this—someone wants to buy a product from your app/website, but they don’t, just because they have a question and don’t have a way to get an answer.That doesn’t sound pleasing, right?Quick fact check: Even if your website is informative, some customers may still have questions while they’re shopping. So you need to be there to answer those questions. Thinking what to do? Below are some suggestions.

• Have a “Contact Us” form on your website.
• Set up a live chat option for your site visitors to communicate with a customer service representative. Aim for offering them an online shopping experience they would get inside a physical store, with a sales associate available to assist them.

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This is especially important if your company sells products that need some extra guidance. Although your product descriptions may be accurate, it’s possible the customer won’t understand the terminology used.

• Answer your visitors’ questions at every stage.
• Don’t leave them alone/unattended at any point.
• Assist them to make the purchase decision.

5. Reviews and Testimonials

Yes, there’s no harm in some self-praise, especially when it’s going to help your visitors to convert.

88% of shoppers say they trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.

This clearly indicates that nearly 90% of people trust a stranger’s opinion online as if it were coming from their close ones. Furthermore, 39% of people say they read product reviews on a regular basis, and only 12% of customers say they don’t check online reviews.Before moving forward, visitors want to know what others are saying about your brand. While they may not blindly follow the advice, it can definitely make a difference What you can do here, is encourage customers to review products they’ve purchased and display these reviews on your website.Below is an example showing how Johnston & Murphy does the same on their ecommerce site:

Customers share personal stories about the uses of the products they purchased and the reasons for recommending them (or not). This helps them get more shoppers to convert and complete their purchase process.

6. Faster Delivery Options

It’s often observed that consumers tend to buy more when you offer them a free shipping. After all, who doesn’t like freebies? When NuFACE offered free shipping incentive to its customers, their orders increased by 90%. Moreover, the company’s average order value (AOV) also increased by 7.32%.

7. Trust Badge

Trust plays a significant role in every step of a user journey. If your target audience doesn’t trust your brand, they won’t visit your website. And even if they land on your website, they might not purchase from you.

“61% of participants said they have at one time NOT completed a purchase because there were no trust logos present.”

The benefits of adding Trust Badges are well highlighted by a number of case studies available online. These badges might include adding trust symbols such as VeriSign or Symantec SSLs. We know that people want to feel secure when shopping online and that’s why , trust badges can directly impact on reducing abandoned cart rate and increasing sales. See how Uptowork saw a significant increase in its sales with the McAfee trust badge on its checkout page.

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8. Secure Payment Gateways

Imagine this—someone wants to buy a product from your website, but they can’t because you don’t accept their preferred payment method.This should never be the reason for you to miss out on conversions.While I realize some credit card companies may charge you higher rates than others, it doesn’t mean you should restrict payment options for your customers. Try to accommodate as many people as possible.While I’m not suggesting you need to accept cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, you should be accepting every major credit card, such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express and so on. Furthermore, you should even offer alternative payment options such as PayPal, Apple Pal and Venmo.You need to offer as many options as possible for your customers. Finally, it all comes down to convenience. The more options you offer, the greater the chance you’ll appeal to a wider audience. Don’t assume everyone wants to pay with the cards you accept if that selection is limited.While deciding these payment offers, you must also consider which payment methods which are relevant to the country where your target audience lives.Assume people will find a similar product elsewhere, where their preferred payment option is accepted, which will crush your conversion rates.

9. Crisp Checkout Process

The below-mentioned survey stat highlights that one of the main reasons for abandoned cart and incomplete purchases is a long checkout process.

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Understand that your visitors have already invested enough time in finalizing the products they want and researching about those products. The only thing they want at this point is a quick checkout. And if you surprise them with long checkout forms now, then don’t blame them for leaving. Make your checkout process as crisp as possible to reduce the chances of abandoned carts. Here are some helpful time-saving features:

• Addressing lookup or predictive entry tools
• Copying the shipping address to the billing address to save time
• Making account creation a part of the process, that is, asking for the same at the end rather than the beginning
• Providing guest checkout
• Clearing error messages which help users to solve issues

The following is a good example from Lowe’s:

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Maintaining the ability to connect with shoppers is an extremely important tool in content marketing.

10. Have a Blog

Having a blog is not a mandate, but is definitely a recommended option. Blogging helps you build organic traffic, build authority, improve SEO, and definitely generate more organic leads. Having well-written blogs can help you attract people who potentially might have the problem you solve and introduce your business to them, build an image of authority in the field, and get their details to use for further marketing (usually through email). It provides the kind of information that is available 24*7 and can be referred by your visitors at any point in time. A blog also reduces your efforts in terms of solving a common problem for your visitors and potential customers.However, having a blog is advisable only if you have concrete resources to invest and the patience to wait for this effort to flourish.

Bonus Tip: Leverage Emotions

Establishing an emotional connection with your visitors is essential for any any form of marketing. While the use of descriptive language is only a part of the equation, the other half involves creating an emotional connection, or an inspiring need or want in a consumer.For example, describing a little black dress isn’t enough; marketers need to take things one step further, providing a potential buyer with a linguistic adventure detailing what kind of feelings such a dress may offer.A dress by itself isn’t necessarily exciting, but imagine the experience of attending a glamorous event in the aforementioned dress, for example, can be the missing piece of the puzzle a shopper needs to click “Add to Cart.”Psychology tells us that emotional connections are paramount in influencing buying decisions.

Test Everything; Assume Nothing

You know your business the best, but there’s still room for improvement when it comes to knowing your visitors. And that’s the reason I’d never recommend that you blindly copy and paste any of the tips mentioned above. Some of these may or may not work for your ecommerce store. You should never miss out on the testing part. Test everything and see what works for you. Ensure that your mobile a/b testing is not based on assumptions, but on data. Test, track, analyze, and implement what works best for your conversion rate.